BLM signal of transition from extraction to preservation another step toward rewilding the West

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has released the outline for a restructured Bureau of Land Management promising to return its main headquarters to DC while increasing its role in the Mountain West by improving a demoralized Grand Junction, Colorado presence.

The US Senate has yet to confirm President Biden's nominee for a BLM Director who will focus on recreation, conservation and restoration while healing the wounds left by the extractive and livestock industries by connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with wildlife corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. 

 

Pete Geddes is Vice President and Chief External Relations Officer for the American Prairie Reserve in Montana.

In July 2021, the BLM released a detailed analysis of American Prairie’s change of use proposal. This comprehensive Environmental Assessment demonstrates that our grazing plan for our privately-owned bison will build a resilient prairie landscape, preserve our lands for public benefit, and contribute to Montana’s economy– all without harming Montana’s ranching community. The BLM’s “Finding of No Significant Impact” came after considerable analysis and public comment, including four in-person meetings in Winnett, Winifred, Malta and Glasgow. American Prairie’s plans are consistent with federal law and agency regulations. To suggest otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking, unmoored from decades of legal and regulatory precedent. Like other property owners, we are exercising our property rights that come with the purchase of land. [Why American Prairie Reserve plans are good for Montana]

Bob Howard, M.D., Ph.D., is a retired University of New Mexico faculty member and a co-founder of the Rewilding Institute in Albuquerque.

An important consideration for rewilding is the potential reversibility or “healing” of the wounds, whether by natural processes alone or in conjunction with human intervention and restoration efforts. Many grazing lands are otherwise minimally disturbed, with only a few fences, dirt roads, or built structures in addition to the grazing impacts, and hold high potential for rewilding. Many agricultural croplands will have been cleared, shaped, plowed, tilled, planted, and harvested over time. But so long as they have not been overly eroded or depleted, and not poisoned, they may hold significant potential for restoration and some degree of rewilding. In contrast, more permanent wounds from mining and mine wastes, Interstate Highways, concrete and steel structures of urban and residential and commercial and industrial development, may present major and long-term obstacles to rewilding on any human time scale. [Howard, Mapping for Rewilding – A Healing Nature’s Wounds Perspective]

Clear the second growth conifers and eastern red cedar then restore aspen and oak habitat, prescribe burns, begin extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, empower tribes, lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from BLM pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and buy out the welfare ranchers Tony Dean warned us about. 

Learn more about the BLM proposal for Grand Junction linked here.

https://t.co/qMqT1fVZud

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) September 17, 2021